Daniel Jaines

The secretary of state for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has visited Lincolnshire to see how the county deals with flooding and speak to local farmers.

MP Liz Truss first joined Boston and Skegness Conservative parliamentary candidate Matt Warman at Lade Bank Pumping Station in Old Leake.

MP Liz Truss with Conservative candidates Matt Warman and Victoria Atkins and members of the National Farmers Union. DJ

The pair then travelled to meet and Louth and Horncastle Conservative candidate Victoria Atkins at a National Farmers Union meeting at J. Oliver & Sons, in Partney.

During today’s (Thursday’s) visit she spoke about how important flooding protection works were across the county and how valuable Lincolnshire’s food industry is.

She said: “It was really impressive to see the work of the internal drainage boards. Matt Warman wanted me to come along and see how vital the agricultural land is here in Lincolnshire. It’s a really, highly productive area and the food industry is really important to the county.”

She said: “I’m very pleased that Lincolnshire has become one of our food enterprise aims, which is all about linking up farming with food manufacturing to capture the whole value of the chain and can produce fantastic products.”

She said: “Coastal defences are vitally important and is part of the investment we are putting in Lincolnshire.

“There are schemes in Louth and Horncastle as well.”

Speaking about the Boston Barrier she said: “I was really impressed. It’s vitally important in protecting more homes but also protecting farmland in the area.”

Other issues included flood protection in Boston, broadband in rural areas such as Louth and Horncastle, protecting coastal tourism in Skegness and Mablethorpe, petrol prices and wind farms.

She said: “We are putting additional funding into broadband and we have over the course of this parliament so coverage overall has increased from 43 per cent to 80 per cent, it will be 90 per cent by 2017.”